Nader and the Nadir of Democracy?by Dan Brookwww.dissidentvoice.org
August 7, 2004

In
the contest to evict George W. Bush from the occupied White House, a
position he does not legitimately occupy, Ralph Nader is in the race for the
presidency, as an independent, while John Kerry is the Democratic nominee.
Nearly four painful years after democracy was disenfranchised, it is
all-too-common to still hear people griping about Nader’s candidacy from
2000 and how he “spoiled” the election. Although I unfortunately expect it
from the corporate media and the mainstream politicians, I can’t believe
that intelligent progressive people continue making the same overly
simplistic and reactionary claim that Nader cost Gore the election. It
should, instead, be extremely clear that Bush and his Gang spoiled the
election for all of us and cost us the election.

Let’s briefly set the
record straight (again): Bush & Co. cost Gore the election through lies,
fraud and intimidation, and through racial profiling and manipulation.
Governor Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, in charge of both her state’s
elections and Bush’s election campaign in Florida, cost Gore the election
through their dirty deeds. The voter purges of real and mostly imagined
felons (nearly a hundred thousand, mostly African-American and Latino,
mostly Democrats, mostly innocent) cost Gore the election and, ironically,
it was the Clinton/Gore administration that created many more felons and
anti-felon sentiment through their right wing crime and welfare policies.
ChoicePoint’s DBT, the company with strong Republican ties and overpaid to
“scrub” the voter lists, cost Gore the election. The cowardly corporate
media in the US, which didn’t investigate or report any of these illegal
irregularities before, during, or after November 2000, cost Gore the
election (only Britain’s Guardian, Observer, and BBC “all non-profit news
organizations” covered this most important story...please read, or re-read,
Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, revised American
edition, for what should have been broadcast from every media outlet).

The
Electoral College cost Gore the election in which he got a majority of the
nation’s (and even Florida’s) votes. Gore cost Gore the election by being a
weak candidate with a weak campaign, by not winning his and Clinton’s home
states, by not decimating Bush in the debates, by agreeing with Bush on
almost all foreign policy issues including past military interventions (and
Gore said he supported his commander-in-chief, George War Bush, in the
decisions to bomb and invade Afghanistan and Iraq), by not having any
effective campaign slogans (I bet you can’t name one... and lock box doesn’t
really count!), and by not campaigning with a morally tarnished though still
politically popular Bill Clinton. The
military votes, including the illegal late ones, cost Gore the election. The
defective voting machines, disproportionately in African American
communities, cost Gore the election. The butterfly ballot and its accidental
demographic, Jews for Buchanan, cost Gore the election. On and on. In any
event, it has been proven, and re-proven, that Gore would have easily won
the election in Florida, and therefore the country, if all the votes had
been counted. That never happened and that cost Gore the election. Neither
John Kerry, nor John Edwards, nor any other senator spoke out against this
obvious fraud and miscarriage of justice against our democratic system.

We should also recall
that many more registered Democrats voted for Bush (about 7 million
nationwide, a quarter million in Florida alone) than people who voted for
Nader. It is shocking but true that fully one-third of union members voted
for Bush along with one-eighth (over 12%!) of self-described “liberals”.
Also, in New Hampshire in 2000, more Republicans voted for Nader than did
Democrats. For what it’s worth, Nader lost more votes to Gore, due to
people’s fear of voting for a third party, than Gore lost to Nader. At
present, polls indicate that Nader is drawing nearly equally from Democrats
and Republicans. It is also worth noting that, at least in the US,
candidates with the most money usually win their elections. George Soros:
$15 million, out of his billions, doesn’t come close to compensating for
Bu$h’s overflowing war chest in 2004.

With declining voter
turnout, 2000 was an aberration with slightly more than half of eligible
voters going to the polls, a bit higher than the previous presidential
election, partly due to Nader sparking people’s interest. For all we know,
Gore would have actually lost the election if Nader hadn’t run, but in fact,
as we know, Gore won and Bush lost. Bush was able to then assume the
presidency because he was selected for and installed in that position, not
by Nader and not even by Gore who didn’t fight hard enough at that crucial
point, but by the Bush-Cheney-Baker Brigade. This is simple stuff, yet
confusion and delusion still seem to reign. While Kerry -- along with
every other senator including his running mate Edwards, Democrat and
Republican alike -- refused to formally oppose Bush’s selection (and it
would have only taken one senator!), Kerry voted for Bush’s wars, Bush’s
Patriot Act, supports the WTO, and many other dangerous and disastrous Bush
policies as well as his odious nominees, despite Kerry’s other differences
with him. Kerry accuses France of being “foolish” in its opposition to
Bush’s stance on Iraq and criticizes Spain’s newly elected prime minister
for pledging to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, for example, while Kerry
boasts that he supported Bush’s military budgets, the largest in history,
although he sometimes “voted for common sense to make changes.” Kerry calls
for sending tens of thousands more troops to Iraq, thereby critiquing Bush’s
war from the right.

Further, Kerry has
already announced that he is reneging on some liberal campaign promises
(e.g., universal preschool, aid for college, opposing Israel’s separation
barrier, and others), has offered the vice presidency to Republican John
McCain, and has considered Bush family friend Republican James Baker as his
special envoy to the Middle East. Like Bush, Kerry opposes the Kyoto
Protocol, designed to reduce the greenhouse gases that lead to global
warming. Kerry also proudly talks about showing himself to be fiscally
conservative and a centrist.

In sharp contrast,
people like Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley
Braun each prove that when they’re involved in the process -- even in a
rigged game where they are mostly marginalized and maligned when not totally
ignored by the corporate media and the corporate candidates -- certain
important issues are addressed, due to their candidacies, that are rarely if
ever mentioned otherwise. That’s a plus for our weak democracy which we
should celebrate instead of castigate.

Nader has worked
tirelessly the last four years, just as he has for nearly 50 years, working
on issues related to public safety, public health, corporate control,
citizen access, and other concerns of justice. He is up there with only a
handful of people who have done so much for this country, directly
benefiting millions by saving lives and increasing democracy, while often
working six and even seven days a week. Nader has also started many
organizations that can continue without him and which create enduring
legacies. In addition to all his time and effort over the decades, he has
also donated a lot of his earned money to the causes he believes in. Nader
has truly been a public servant par excellence.

One thing I continue
to hear from Democrats -- at the level of Code Orange and often Red -- is
about the issue of abortion, which is vitally important, and the power of
Supreme Court nominees to affect this issue. Unfortunately, Democrats have
been complicit in the Republican attempts to hollow out reproductive rights.
Neither Kerry nor nearly every other politician, for that matter, support
free and unrestricted abortion and other reproductive rights. Indeed, Kerry
has announced that he is not opposed to nominating anti-abortion judges to
the federal courts. Pro-choice activists should continually demand that
reproductive freedom be preserved and enhanced, creating a movement and a
culture that would prohibit (mostly male) politicians and judges from
chipping away at and possibly overturning safe and legal abortions and other
human rights. Relying on our top elected and appointed office holders is a
very narrow and ultimately dead-end type of politics. If we were
sufficiently mobilized, we would have much less to fear from the anti-choice
right wing. The Hopi remind us that “we are the ones we have been waiting
for”!

Nader raises an
interesting hypothetical. Suppose, he says, that both major parties were
against abortion rights. Wouldn’t we expect reproductive rights activists to
run a pro-choice candidate, try to raise this important issue in any way
possible, and perhaps even start another party? Nader claims that he is
doing a similar thing regarding corporate influence on government and the
two major parties. Yet another area where we are not sufficiently organized.
One does not necessarily have to agree to recognize that as a valid
argument.

I wish we had an
enhanced political system, possibly with publicly-financed campaigns, public
use of our public airwaves, a sharp reduction or elimination of corporate
interference in the political or at least electoral arena, proportional
representation, cumulative voting, instant runoff or “rank choice” voting,
fusion candidacies, abolishment of the Electoral College, and/or some other
more efficient and inclusive democratic voter mechanisms. If this were so,
elections would be more fair, the other half of the electorate -- comprising
a hundred million people -- would be more likely to participate, and the
possibility of someone’s candidacy wouldn’t be a cause of concern regarding
the spoiling of spoiled candidates and a spoiled political party. Nader
wishes for an enhanced political system, as well, and has worked to achieve
I -- for all of us -- for most of his life. What has the Democratic Party
done, especially since the electoral debacle of 2000, to remedy any of these
problems? All that said, I won’t vote for Nader this time. He’s not likely
to be efficacious, even on his own terms, and, crucially, he will not
contribute to the necessary building of either a party or a movement. Quite
the contrary. I do, however, continue to admire his activism. Likewise,
though, I won’t be voting for Kerry and settling for yet another lesser
evil. In the short run, Kerry could not be worse than Bush; in the long run,
however, it’s too early to tell. JFK and LBJ led us into Vietnam and then to
Nixon, Carter led us into Nicaragua and then to theocratic Iran and
Reagan/Bush, Clinton led us into NAFTA, welfare deform, and Kosovo and then
to Bush the Lesser. Kerry is certainly no better than the Democrats who
precede him. What will he lead us to?

Republicans, followed
by their B-team Democrats, have been shifting to the right over the past
decades. How far will we allow them to go? How close are we to the
precipice? Democrats aren’t ultimately better than Republicans if they act
as a pressure valve allowing a bit of steam to be occasionally released
before getting back to business -- and both parties are almost
single-mindedly pro-business. The Democrats need to be better than that. It
is not that Kerry doesn’t have differences with Bush, but that their
similarities are more significant than their differences. We need a
candidate from a party that is pro-people, a party that stops apologizing
and merely defending, a party that thinks big and fights hard. We need a
candidate that systematically wants to change structures and policies, not
just people and appearances. I therefore side with the sentiments of Eugene
Debs: I’d rather vote for a candidate I want and not get him, than vote for
a candidate I don’t want and get him. My vote has to be earned, not taken
for granted.

We
need to remember, however, that one’s vote is a minuscule contribution to
politics, so whether one votes or not, or votes for whomever (including
Democrat Kerry, Independent Nader, or Green Cobb), it is much more important
to educate, agitate, and organize for progressive social change -- before
and after Election Day -- rather than perennially waiting, almost begging,
for yet another very privileged person to (mis)rule and (mis)represent us.
As Gandhi says, we must create the change we wish to see in this world.